


i'm eve, i want to try

by am_fae



Category: Ogniem i Mieczem | With Fire and Sword (1999), Trylogia | The Trilogy - Henryk Sienkiewicz
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canon Era, Class Issues, M/M, Pre-OT3, Skrzetuski was unbending as an axle and self-confident to excess, i learn vocative, truly eager for danger
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-22
Updated: 2019-05-22
Packaged: 2020-03-09 16:21:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,993
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18920662
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/am_fae/pseuds/am_fae
Summary: As night falls in Rozłogi, Jan confronts his second love.





	i'm eve, i want to try

**Author's Note:**

  * For [LucyLovecraft](https://archiveofourown.org/users/LucyLovecraft/gifts).



> for tuulikki's prompt on tumblr!

The deepening night brought no rest. It must have been hours since Helena’s Tatar servant had left his room in Rozłogi, Jan thought bitterly. And yet the words the old man had spoken still tumbled together in his mind.

_Bohun…_

The Cossack’s glowering visage flashed before his eyes. For all his stare had burned in the dark like some undead creature’s, he couldn’t have been more than a few years from Jan’s own age: young and dark-haired and proud as an eagle.

He was beautiful. At dinner, in the dance, Jan had hardly thought of it, so drunk he was on Helena’s presence at his side – on the graceful warmth of her body and the fire in her dark gaze. But in the few words they had exchanged…

 _Small war, small glory!_ Words that resonated in Jan’s own heart.

Bohun had charmed him utterly. And envoy that he was, Skrzetuski had long since heard of the famous ataman – the Cossacks’ darling hero, a man who would dare anything, a whirlwind that roamed the furthest reaches of the steppe, aglitter with stolen jewels.

Jurko Bohun was said to be handsome. Yet the peasant stories and the prince’s military records had never captured the careless way Bohun’s dark hair fell over his brow. Unbidden, Jan caught himself trying to recall the color of his eyes.

 _A terrible man,_ Helena had said.

_Blood has fallen between them and hatred has sprung up._

Maybe if he turned the other way beneath the furs, he’d be able to sleep.

 

The fire in the hall was burning low, the only light in the room where they had danced but hours before. Jan had believed Rozłogi to be a coarse place, the kind of borderland home he’d grown accustomed to, a place where fairytale finery met the harsh realities of the Steppe. At night the rough-hewn walls had become a foreign land.

Jan stopped at the sight of him, but it was too late to turn back – the Cossack, slumped over his lute, startled from his stupor at Jan’s footsteps. The coals of the fire gleamed in his wolflike eyes as they followed him, and Jan shivered at the sudden intensity of that gaze.

Bohun took a swig from the bottle before him. As Jan moved to face him, he couldn’t help but wrinkle his nose at the smell of cheap horilka.

 _No wonder it doesn’t feel like a lord’s house._ Not even the pettiest nobility would deign to serve their guests a drink that wasn’t mead or wine.

 _But then again, I suppose he wasn’t made for such finer stuffs._ Perhaps the thought was unworthy of him, but Jan held his head higher all the same.

Bohun was watching him. As the Cossack’s eyes flickered over his body, Jan was suddenly very aware that he’d stripped to his shirtsleeves – nearly dressed for bed. Opposite him, Bohun glittered dimly in the lavish clothes he’d worn to dinner.

_I should have my uniform. A steel gorget and Wiśniowiecki’s colors. He wouldn’t stare so much then._

But what did he have to fear, when he was an officer of the prince’s armed regiment and Bohun just a Cossack colonel?

Jan tilted his head so that the firelight might better glow against the curve of his throat. Perhaps the light played over his skin as lovingly as it did Bohun’s. His shirt was loose and open at the collar – God knew there was more for it to touch.

_Let him look._

Yet when Bohun raised his dark-lashed eyes to Jan’s face once more there was a strange, fey look in their depths.

 _Blue-green,_ Jan registered faintly.

“What is it, your grace?” There was poison in that soft-edged voice. “Can’t sleep for thinking about her?”

Jan turned, bending to stoke the fire. A scatter of rose-colored sparks flew towards the manor’s high ceiling, invisible in the darkness.

_If you only knew._

He remembered Helena’s warning. Whatever else might come to pass, he wouldn’t endanger her now by being loose-tongued.

A low peal of laughter behind him, and once more the swish of the horilka. “Me too.”

Bohun slammed the bottle back down with a jolt that made Jan jump to his feet. Bohun was standing now, though he wavered considerably.

“Don’t you fear,” he slurred. “I’ll be sweet to you as honey.”

He stepped closer, swaying. Jan stood where he was, pulse quickening, the heat of the fire beating against his back.

“Or else you’ll be the death of me, ey? Is that right?”

_What?_

“I will be,” he answered clumsily, “if you don’t treat the princess of this house with the respect she deserves.”

The words were hasty – perhaps too hasty – but Jan’s heart was pounding as it did in battle, when he waited, tense as a bowstring, for the gesture that would signal him to lead the prince’s husaria in a headlong charge. Bohun glared up at him, dark and beautiful, and close as they were, he realized distantly that he was taller.

“Of course,” the Cossack grinned. A poisonous grin, but God, what sweet poison, to fall from such red lips! “But I’m not speaking of Helena.”

Jan’s breath trembled in his lungs. His lip curled, half a smile.

“Am I that dangerous to you?”

Bohun laughed like a wild thing. A ghost of that sharp-edged mirth still clung to his mouth as he spoke, though the words, when they came, were soft and anguished.

“Heleno, Heleno…!” His beautiful face contorted in pain. He staggered, casting out for the table to catch his fall, crumpling into himself, consumed like a delicate curl of black ash. Jan could barely stand the sight. Bohun’s musical voice was low, muffled, the slight sing-song of his accent overtaking the Polish. “If you only knew how much you’ve stolen from me.”

“Stolen?”

Bohun looked up haggardly, as startled as if he’d only that moment remembered Jan stood before him.

“Something which for you may be meaningless,” the Cossack whispered, hatred seeping back into his voice. “You can reach out and have it whenever you want.”

Despite everything he’d ever known, Jan found himself spellbound, fastened to the spot as if some greater power were holding him in place, calling on him to ease the tormented soul of this unquiet spirit.

 _Or to reach out, if he –_ Jan swallowed.

“What is that?”

“Love,” Bohun breathed.

A chill ran through Jan’s body despite the flickering heat of the fire. Outside, the stars hung still in their places, frozen midcircle by the January cold.

“Helena’s love?”

The Cossack’s smile was a sabre’s edge in the firelight.

“Wouldn’t you like to know, Laszku.”

Jan let out the breath he’d been holding. Absurdly, he was struck by the sudden, hysterical desire to laugh.

His nerves were trembling, afire as they’d never been in any battle. Every sense screamed at him to flee. But what had he truly come down for, if not to see what enthralling mysteries this strange man had to offer? Jan Skrzetuski had never been a coward. He studied Bohun’s features, half-hidden in shadow. Having laid the challenge, he wouldn’t back down.

He lifted his chin.

“Try me.”

Close as they were, he could hear Bohun’s sharp intake of breath.

Bohun kissed like a whirlwind, lunging forward and sweeping Jan up in his wake. Jan clung to his broad shoulders as he lost his balance: Bohun was all claws, claws and the burning taste of horilka, searing in the sweetness of his mouth as Jan parted his own to let him in. Bohun made a low, hungry sound in his throat, adjusting his arm around Jan’s waist – one hand tangled jaggedly in the bunched linen of his shirt; the other, somehow clumsy, almost tender, cupped the nape of Jan’s neck –

– _pinning him there_ – Jan moaned at the thought, muffled by Bohun’s mouth, and Bohun tugged him closer.

The Cossack was stronger than him: in his arms and tipping backwards, weak at the knees, Jan barely supported his own weight. He realized with a thrill that he couldn’t have escaped Bohun’s grip even if he’d wanted to.

But in this instant there was nowhere else he’d rather be.

Bohun broke the kiss first, panting for breath. Something vulnerable was shaking apart in those fractured eyes when they flew open – eyes like the frozen Dnieper, but how much more lovely _now_ , hazy with pleasure _–_

 _Like a summer sky in storm,_ Jan thought, nonsensically.

They steadied themselves against each other, and Jan found himself laughing, a delighted, breathless little laugh.

“You –” Jan shook his head, smiling, one arm still cast about Bohun’s shoulders. “You have no idea how much I want you right now.” The words blended with the laugh, with the soft mingled sound of their breaths in the half-darkness. Jan fit his hand to Bohun’s jaw and drew him close, covering that carmine mouth with his own. They both stood on solid ground now, and Jan, a spark lit in his heart that burned brighter than any flame, kissed Bohun with all the art he’d ever learned in the tents of his comrades-at-arms – kissed Bohun deeply and tenderly, smiling against his lips, until he could feel the pounding of the other man’s heart and Bohun started to melt under his touch, pressing against Jan’s chest as if he wanted to crawl between his ribs and make his home there.

Bohun pushed at his shoulders hard enough to bruise, and the fantasy was broken. Jan felt something shatter inside him, as if a delicate thread wound about them had snapped at the blow.

Bohun hunched into himself some steps away, shuddering, and for a moment the night hid his wild eyes.

“You’ve ruined me,” he cried, hand flying to his mouth. His teeth caught on the knuckles. “She loves you!” The helpless, furious words held all the condemnation of Judgement Day. “She’ll never look at me the way she looks at you. I wish you’d never come here! If you stay, I lose _her,_ and if you go, I lose you!” Jan could never have imagined the man who’d challenged him by the carriage saying those words. “It’s all one to me!” Bohun’s eyes flashed, even as he choked back a laugh that sounded like a sob. “You’ll choose whatever pleases your grace. And _leave me alone.”_

There was something so desolate in that musical voice that Jan longed to go to him. Yet somehow the few steps between them had become an unbreachable chasm.

“I won’t –” he started to say, and held his tongue. Dizzy, drunk on the horilka in Bohun’s breath and the fierce sweetness of his kiss, he saw Helena’s face appear before him, the haunted resolve he’d seen so clearly in her eyes, eyes like the starry night sky…

_What have I done?_

Bohun wiped at his mouth. Years of loneliness showed in the way he lifted his head, gathering his pride like a handful of broken glass. He laughed. “Ey, Laszku, I wish I had the strength to kill you. I’d kill us both if I could do it.”

“Call me Jan,” Jan said. The fear which leapt to life in his breast now had nothing at all to do with Bohun’s threat of steel and blood, and everything to do with the hollow coldness where Bohun’s body had slotted against his so perfectly. He tried a smile. “Kiss me again and I’ll give you something to remember me by.”

“So you will go.” Bohun’s gaze held bitter triumph.

“I won’t,” Jan heard himself say. He swayed on his feet; the ground seemed to be falling away beneath him. The only steady thing in the world was Bohun’s hate-filled eyes. “I couldn’t.”

The Cossack had crossed the distance between them before Jan even realized what he was doing. Bohun kissed him so hungrily Jan thought he might faint for lack of air.

“Maybe,” Bohun gasped, voice ragged. “But you won’t forget. I promise you that.”

**Author's Note:**

> This is entirely the fault of the 1962 OIM movie Col ferro e col fuoco, which is objectively horrible but for which I feel a lot of kinship since they kept Jan's true spirit of being a ho and added a lot of extra Jan/Bohun content even if Bohun is blond and evil.  
> "Am I that dangerous to you?" and "Something that for you perhaps is meaningless. You can have it whenever you want."/"What do you mean?"/"Love." are totally plagiarized from their bonus fireside chat scene, but I deleted Bohun's evil monkey.
> 
> title is from Sia - Fire Meet Gasoline


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